Tag: Agehi

He was born in Vardar of Yenice. His real name is Mansur. Being from the cadi class he was a scholar, a historian and a poet. He died in Istanbul in 985/1577. According to Tahir Bey of Bursa Agehi left a complete divan. Agehi took part in Suleyman the Lawgiver’s last campaign Zigetvar in 974/1566 and wrote a historical record of this event as well.

He wrote a commemarotive poem of more than fifteen couplets with conventional mariner’s language and offered it to the Sultan through Piyale Pasha. According to records he was given the Sheref Thelogical School in Istanbul. Since he was in Gelibolu as a teacher in close contact with Piyale Pasha who was a master seaman of those times, it is only natural that he wrote about the sea and knew the conventional terminology of the seaman pretty well.

In our literature we have had the tradition of writing with terminologies of various subjects and occupations. Some of these occupations and subjects are astronomy, music, books, medicine and logic. We do have poems written by Agehi written during this period with mariner phraseology which were an influence in literary circles.

Although there were poets like Yetimi who wrote poems in the field before Agehi did his was the well known and studied of the two works. His poems seem to be the ones considered to be more worthwile to study and teach by people like Deruni, Taflicah Yahya Bey, Aski (Işki), Gubari, Za’fi and Molla Mehmed.

Writting with mariner terminology and using words of this phraseology in stating metaphase and allegories in prose and poetry both was quite common among writers and poets of Suleyman the Lawgiver period. We could attribute this fact to the greatness, the popularity and to the grandness of the Ottoman navy during these times. The fact that sailors of the empire reached all the way to India in Suleyman’s reign made the prospects of the occupation look more prestigions, glorious and rewarding than were before.

Glorifying of the same subject was common among literary people during the following centuries as well. We have poems by Zari (died 1098/1686), Refeti (died 1118/1706) and Bursali Feyzi (died 1185/1771-1772) written in mariner language.